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And today in Parliament

Today HS2 will officially be discussed in three places in the Houses of Parliament, although they are unlikely to be at the same time, and there is another debate due tomorrow in the House of Lords.

This afternoon, there is a Motion relating to the High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill to be discussed in the main chamber of the House of Commons. This is to discuss the changes that were announced last week (although the full information needed has not yet been published). More information can be found in the research briefing on the Parliament website.

Tomorrow, there is a debate in the House of Lords main chamber prompted by the Lords Economic Affairs Committee investigation on the economic case for HS2.

Meanwhile one of the last appointments to the shadow cabinet made by Jeremy Corbyn was the new shadow Transport secretary, Lilian Greenwood. This has led to suggestions that she wasn’t his first choice.

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Reading in an article in the daily mail last week that we are taking fewer car journeys in our cars than ever before, due to more people working from home and using email and conferencing, and with a new leader in the Labour Party…. I think we should all write to him pointing out the above and it is not to late for him to get this project cancelled when it is put back to the MPs to vote on . Saving the country spending this vast amount of money

“…we are taking fewer car journeys THAN EVER BEFORE”…(counting from when, I wonder?)

But one can well understand a typical commuter,stuck in a traffic jam and facing congestion and all the difficulties in finding -and paying for- a parking space…not to mention in London, the congestion charge. The private car is, in these circumstances, no longer the choice of a privileged minority and the more cars there are competing for limited urban road space, then the more acute the problem becomes.

With so many now able to work from home for at least part of their time, perhaps it is all the more surprising that the number of rail journeys made annually have more than doubled since the 1990s,according to the train operating companies.

‘Part time’ season tickets, geared to the needs of those who don’t travel to work for a full week, will surely lead to a further steady increase…

With commuters turning to rail in preference to road, is it not a gross misappropriation of resources to prioritise one scheme that is proving so controversial in terms of cost, the decades before delivery, environmental devastation and poor connectivity?…..

When originally proposed HS2 was supposed to be a credible alternative to air travel (not a commuter service) because it would have offered a seamless interface via Eurostar to the continent, allowing somebody in Manchester to travel straight through to Paris and beyond….That (albeit) 20 plus years down the line) was what HS2 was for no more no less

On that very day when Higgins entered the equation and identified the wholly inadequate single track ultra destructive HS1/HS2 link for the chop, HS2 became analogous to an airliner on a tether……

It can’t get to the continent and now it won’t even get into London anytime soon…..So then it’s like a tethered Jet that cannot land where people want to go!

HS2 is an object lesson in how poor planning leads to repeated descoping when the bad bits gradually come out of the woodwork but the decision makers refuse to accept that the whole thing is riddled with flaws and needs a complete reappraisal starting again from a blank sheet of paper.

If the promoters are serious about improving commuter connections, a railway with no connections is not the answer. In 2026 the only commuter path it will offer is Old Oak Common (near but not in London) to a parkway station (near but not in Birmingham)

As commuter services go HS2 is like chartering a jet airliner to cross the road!